In one of Hilaire Belloc’s most popular books The Cruise of the Nona (1914) he wrote:

“All that which concerns the sea is profound and final. The sea provides visions, darknesses, revelations… It has rendered remote the cares and wastes of the land; for of all creatures that move and breathe upon the earth we of mankind are the fullest of sorrows. But the sea shall comfort us, and perpetually show us new things and assure us. It is the common sacrament of this world”.